Electrified vehicles including hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs), plugin hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) rely on a traction battery to provide power to a traction motor for propulsion and a power inverter therebetween to convert direct current (DC) power to alternating current (AC) power. The typical AC traction motor is a 3-phase motor that may be powered by 3 sinusoidal signals each driven with 120 degrees phase separation. The traction battery is configured to operate in a particular voltage range and provide a maximum current. The traction battery is alternatively referred to as a high-voltage battery.
Also, many electrified vehicles include a DC-DC converter, also referred to as a variable voltage converter (VVC), to convert the voltage of the traction battery to an operational voltage level of the electric machine. The electric machine, which may include a traction motor, may require a high voltage and high current. Due to the voltage, current and switching requirements, a solid state switch such as an Insulated Gate Bipolar junction Transistor (IGBT) is typically used to generate the signals in the power inverter and the VVC.